A variety of packaged business applications are available from different manufacturers. In many cases, two or more of such applications are installed within a computing environment to operate cooperatively as a system or as part of a larger system. The purchasing organization typically changes the packaged business applications to achieve interoperability with other applications and/or systems and to better suit the needs of the organization. Unfortunately, measuring the impact of changes to a system including one or more packaged business applications is difficult. Such is the case as most packaged business applications operate as black boxes allowing users and administrators to view inputs and outputs, while obscuring or hiding internal operations.
Accordingly, when introducing a change to a system, it is difficult for end users and administrators alike to determine whether the change will have an adverse effect upon application availability, system functionality, and/or system performance. In many cases, adverse effects such as an application being rendered unavailable, broken functionality, reduced system responsiveness, and/or the like are only discovered well after the change has been introduced into the system. Correspondingly, it is also difficult to determine whether a change to a system will have a positive effect and/or potentially lead to further unrealized benefits.